September – Week 3 Summary

17Sep

September 13, 2011

Bank Of America Job Cuts Fail To Address Looming Legal Costs, Experts Say
This is nothing new, job cuts are simply a sign of the times. In recent months, how many times have you heard about large corporations laying off workers in scores. They’re allowed to that, they’re private businesses, and being in the United States provides them with that freedom. But when those same corporations exclaim that they are the “job creators” and that taxing themwould only harm their ability to create said jobs, I have a problem with that. Bank of America processed this run of layoffs to try to save up money to pay for their legal costs as a result of their 2008 acquisition of the subprime lender Countrywide Financial. Here’s what I have a problem with.

A handful of financial institution lobbyists successfully deregulated the banking industry with nearly $5 billion in contributions over the last decade (source). These “evil” regulations were put in place shortly after the Great Depression to prevent the very thing that caused our economy to dip into recession territory this time due to deregulation. Several politicians have been trying to reinstate these regulations but someone…Bank of America…has been very vocal about that actually happening. So in some cases, this horrible economic environment was built by their own hand. No one to blame but themselves.

While Bank of America is an exception to this one, so many of these “job creators” have been posting record profits while simultaneously and following cutting jobs. (source) Navistar, AT&T, John Deere, and Wellpoint are just a few of the many corporations that posted record profits and subsequently laid off large numbers of their workforce. (source)

Numerous corporations, many of the ones posting record profits, have been shipping jobs overseas in search of dirt cheap labor and lax environmental and safety regulations.

Due to the many loopholes and exemptions afforded to these “job creators” many of them to this day have gone years without paying a dime in taxes. The following companies paid no taxes last year: Exxon Mobil ($156 million rebate, $19 billion profit), Bank of America ($1.9 billion rebate, not including bailout plus $4.4 billion profit), General Electric, Chevron, Boeing, Valero Energy, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, ConocoPhillips, and Carnival Cruise Lines. Some of those names are quite recognizable as major campaign contributors to numerous politicians, I wonder if there’s a connection.

So many of you have paid no taxes, you layoff countless workers then ship their jobs overseas, and you manipulate the political environment for the purposes of deregulation in the interest of maximizing profits. You dare to call yourselves job creators? I have no problem with giving tax incentives to companies hiring Americans for jobs. But if you’re engaging in the activities in the list above, then you deserve to be taxed just like the rest of us. You’re not helping anyone, you are in fact hurting everyone, with unemployment, income disparity, dangerous deregulation. I’m sorry, but since you’re so interested in taking jobs overseas why don’t you just relocate your entire organization over there as well, see how that works out for you, we’ll be sure to put high tariffs on anything you try to bring back in to the States.

That was my brother’s death you were cheering, you a$$holes
In case you missed the CNN/Tea Party debates something rather profound occurred, Wolf Blitzer, the debate’s moderator, posed a simple question to the candidates. If there existed a person unable to pay for healthcare who was comatose, should that person be left to die? Ron Paul’s response skated around the issue, and when Wolf Blitzer asked him to clarify if society should just let that person die, his responded with a No. Nothing to exciting, but then, out of the crowds, several hollered out, “Yeah!” followed by laughter from others. (source) Would those Tea Partiers call themselves Christian, pretty sure a lack of compassion that strong disqualifies you from that label. Would those that yelled out call themselves “right-to-lifers,” oh I get it, as long as you’re in the womb you’re a-okay, but once you’re out of there, too bad. All that aside, going back to the link that I placed at the top of this entry. A man whose brother who worked his whole life but, after trying to go into business on his own, fell on difficult financial times and being no longer able to afford insurance came down with some rather nasty and aggressive cancer. He went to the ER soon enough that had he been insured, probably would have survived the battle, but was simply given painkillers and sent on his way. Over the course of the following months his life deteriorated to the point that he was in immense pain and eventually admitted himself to the ER once more. At that point he was shuffled from ER to a free clinic of sorts due to his uninsured status, the free clinic could only do so much with the resources available and before long he died while in serious pain. While the situation that lead to his death was different, the circumstances were the same and therefore, by extension, those people were cheering about this man’s brother’s death like it was some kind of sick display of how great this country is. This country focuses more on the potential profits that can be generated from someone’s misery and less on the care being given. The thing is while these people cheer about some hypothetical person being left to die because they’re uninsured, 45,000 real people die in situations just like this man’s brother every year. This is heartless, non-human, and not compassionate, and I’m not just talking about this handful of people’s cheers. We have the financial means to insure the entire nation (whether they’re paying or not) and all while paying significantly less than we currently are. And if these Tea Partiers could look past their illogical fears they could see the money-saving potential, seeing as it looks like the money is all that seems to matter to them.

Random Quote

"They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want … Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else... Good honest hard-working people continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about you..." - George Carlin

Random Quote

"If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals." -J.K. Rowling

Random Quote

"Every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies...A theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." - Dwight D. Eisenhower